Chris Green - Only the Good Die Young

Oh my God. “No, Amanda Lee. It couldn’t have been Elizabeth. She loved you and would never do that to you and…” Should I tell her? Could I trust fake Dean’s information enough?

Like that mattered anymore.

“I know that Elizabeth moved on after she died,” I said. “Don’t ask me how. You just need to believe what I’m telling you.”

She turned to me with her tearstained face, hope filling her eyes. “Do you think it’s true?”

Without hesitation, I nodded. “With my entire heart.”

Who was lying now?

The news seemed to strengthen her. Maybe, later, she would come to doubt me, but sometimes we believe what we need to in order to go on.

As the occasional car drove by on the road behind us, I expected the hard-core general to take Amanda Lee over again. But her voice was still unconfident, shaky.

“That dark spirit truly wanted to announce itself tonight.”

“It did the job. But what interests me is that message it left. ‘You will pay.’ Who was it talking about?”

Amanda Lee sent a slow glance to me. “Any one of us in that room. Me. You.”

Gavin? I thought.

But if the dark spirit wasn’t Elizabeth, why would it be after him?

A terrible notion nudged me. “What if Wendy was right on? What if her mom came back and…”

“What?”

“I don’t know. That family is so damned cold and messed up that there could be a million scenarios.” A million family secrets that we hadn’t uncovered yet.

“The spirit flew out of the house, though, didn’t it?” Amanda Lee asked, still fixated on the dangerous part. “It did leave.”

“Yeah. I think you expelled it. And the Edgetts seem to believe that I was that spirit and the house is now free of a haunting. But their live-in maid talked to them after you left and she’s calling a cleaner to make sure the mansion is extra safe.”

Amanda Lee nodded, giving me another mortified glance in the mirror. “I’m glad the cleaner is coming. I shouldn’t have done what I did to Wendy, and not only will a cleaning keep her safe, but it’ll put an end to any poltergeist speculation.” She sighed. “It was one thing for me to talk about collateral damage during a haunting, but actually seeing what happened tonight when that spirit crashed the séance… it’s not just talk anymore. It’s real.”

“No shit. By the way, I was trying to stop you from framing Wendy.”

“I noticed, and I almost didn’t carry through. Then…”

I took an educated guess. “Then you thought of our mission.”

She nodded, the tears teeming in her eyes again.

“Amanda Lee,” I said. “I want to stay here with you, but the cleaner’s going to be there soon, and that limits my time with Gavin. I can still—”

“You’re not going back there.”

Um… what?

She was shaking her head again, this time harder. “That dark spirit changes everything. It could harm you in so many ways.”

“But what about bringing closure to Elizabeth?”

She wiped her nose. All the makeup was getting smudged—lipstick, mascara, extra foundation and contouring. “Liz wouldn’t want you to go back there. There’s something evil in or near that house now, and there’s got to be a better way to see that Gavin gets his just deserts one day.”

She was being emotional, not thinking things through. So was I the one who needed to solve this mystery now? Somehow it had taken the place of my own murder, showing me that, someday, I could get closure for myself, too. It gave me hope.

“I’m not scared to go back,” I said, meaning it. I’d died a victim, but that didn’t mean I had to be one forever.

“Jensen…”

I had to get on with this. “It’s also a good idea for me to be in that house with Wendy and the other innocents, just in case that dark spirit decides to come around again before the cleaner arrives. I can protect them from what we brought over.”

She couldn’t argue with that part.

“Do you have salt in this car?” I asked.

She seemed to sense that I was going to do what I was going to do, no matter what. “I always carry some in my purse.”

“Good. Why don’t you sprinkle it around in your car to keep that dark spirit out of here in case it was writing that ‘You will pay’ note to you?”

“You’re right. Okay.”

I already knew that her house was protected. And that she knew how to at least temporarily shoo a spirit away. I felt good about the odds of her security. Honestly, she was the last person I was worried about with this dark spirit. My fears ran more to the Edgetts, the innocent ones in particular.

Amanda Lee was already in motion, opening the car door, her purse in hand. She dug into it for the salt and circled it at every opening of the car while I waited.

“You won’t be able to ride in here anytime soon,” she said.

“I’m more of a VW Bug sort of girl anyway.”

We looked at each other, and she still seemed ashamed. Maybe that was a good thing. Maybe she could start the rest of her life tonight.

As for me? I was continuing what I’d started.

“Drive safe,” I said, rising in the air.

“I still wish you wouldn’t go back.”

“No chance.” Not only was I without fear, but I was humming with anticipation.

She got back into the Mercedes, and from behind her closed window, she pressed her fingers to the glass in good-bye. I lifted my hand, imitating the shape of her hand on the window.

Then, with one last swipe to her eyes, she started the engine, pulling onto the quiet road while I flew up to the power lines. Just for a short time.

As soon as I could—maybe even too soon—I jammed out of there, up the road again, to the mansion. The first thing I noticed was that every light was shining through the windows, and someone had already boarded up the broken sitting room pane.

Was Constanza savvy enough to have blocked off the chimney, too, just until the house could be cleaned?

I traveled to the roof, braced myself on top of the chimney, then rolled down into it, expecting to be barricaded at any instant. When I wasn’t, I got a little jittery, like I’d had another can of predeath Mello Yello.

If I could get back in the house, then the dark spirit could be anywhere, too. But had it just used Amanda Lee’s portal to arrive in this dimension and it was gone now?

I found everyone in the kitchen, their backs to the cabinets as they sat on the marble-tiled floor. Farah and Noah were huddled side by side while Wendy and Constanza stayed near each other. Gavin, the lone wolf, was the only one left standing, his arms crossed over his thick chest as he leaned against a counter and looked out the window toward the pool.

My first instinct was to go to him, see if I could lure him away from the others so I could continue my haunting, but then I saw the salt on the floor. It was in a circle around them, on the tile, on the counter.

Of course , I thought. Even a rich household wouldn’t have an unlimited supply of salt, and they’d made do with what they had on hand until the cleaner arrived. She had obviously advised the Edgetts about what to do to safeguard themselves, just in case.

I also noticed that everyone but Gavin was holding either a cross or a crucifix, which was a fine idea, seeing as they might affect a dark spirit. But not me.

Still, I kept a good distance away so I wouldn’t alert them with my temperature.

“Do you see anything out there?” Farah asked Gavin. She was looking at her older brother like he was a commando who was there to guard them all. A protector. But he also seemed just as sleep-deprived as he had before, even worse now, actually, with red smudges under his eyes and a five o’clock shadow making him even rougher.